


Death Is Not The End

by bodyeIectric



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Dissociation, F/F, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Novella, Post-Episode AU: s03e07 Thirteen, Slow Build, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2018-12-08 15:29:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11649447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bodyeIectric/pseuds/bodyeIectric
Summary: Leksa kom Trikru, first Commander of the Twelve Clans, was shot in error by her fleimkepa, and died in Clarke's arms. When she then wakes up alive in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by doctors and unsure of who she is or how she got there, her only interests are to find out what happened to her, and what happened to Clarke.





	1. Ai Laik Leksa Kom Trikru

She woke up alone, in a bright white room. Her body felt heavy and foreign, and for a moment she felt an excruciating bolt of agony in her abdomen. But as soon as she felt it, it faded, and she realized that what she was feeling wasn't pain but rather the absence of it, the shadow of it. The memory of pain that should be, but wasn't. ****  
** **

She couldn't remember who she was, or where, or how she'd come to be wherever she was. Her only memory was that fading sensation of bodily trauma, and even it seemed false and far away the longer she remained conscious. Panic began to seep into her blood, setting her muscles tense. Beyond the fear, however, there was a minute part of her that was awakened by this new sensation of anxiety, like a piece of her had been waiting for an attack and relished the opportunity to defend herself.  ****  
** **

She examined the room quickly, gathering information on her surroundings in a calculating sweep that felt entirely natural. She found herself sitting upright in a bed where she must have just been sleeping ( _or unconscious_ , hissed her brain, on offense), and it was white and fresh. Though she had no memories of other material, this starkly clean fabric struck a chord of newness within her. She knew she had never seen sheets like these before. ****  
** **

The walls were also white and startlingly clean. In fact, everything in this room looked untouched, though she felt that when she closed her eyes and quickly opened them, she could see an afterimage of blood and dust and pine trees layered over the scene for the briefest of moments. Somehow, the feeling was comforting. This room had no soul, and it had no heart. She needed to see color again. She wanted to see it bleed. ****  
** **

Aside from the bed, there were two small tables to her left and right sides, and a boxy piece of furniture made of stacked drawers against the wall opposite. There were no other furnishings. There also seemed to be no doors or windows, and as she noticed this anomaly, the panic in her throat began to mount. She felt trapped like an animal, closed in underground. Was she left in this cell to die? To perish, trapped like an animal in a ( _mountain_ , suggested her mind) cage? ****  
** **

_No, no_ , she thought. _Keep calm_ . There had to be a way out, because there had been a way in. She crept from her spotless bed and slowly paced around the walls, sliding her hands across the smooth surface. A few steps from her bed, she found a seam running up from the floor to a short distance above her head. She tried to press her fingers to the line, but nothing gave. She pushed her palms against the wall on either side and shoved with all her strength, to achingly little result. ****  
** **

Frustrated, she slammed her fist against the wall, with no avail. Again. Bang! Again. Bang! "Let me out!" she shouted, slamming her shoulder into the seam. "Open! The! Door!" she screamed, punctuating each word with a desperate kick to the wall. She cursed her bare feet. ****  
** **

She frantically looked around for a weapon, anything she could use, and her eye lit on the bedside table. Pulling an edge of the tabletop, she aimed to break off one of the legs to use as a bludgeon-- but was stopped dead. The table wouldn't budge. She knelt down and saw heavy rivets bolting it to the floor. She pushed her back against the bed, trying to slide it from its position. It, too, was secured.  ****  
** **

True fear began to cloud her vision. Images of the walls pressing inwards upon her filled her mind. She cast around wildly for inspiration. ****  
** **

The drawers. Their box might be nailed down, but were they? She pulled on the bottommost drawer, hard, and it slid out almost completely. Two thin metal tracks held it to the casing. She thrust her heel down on it once, twice. She couldn't shake the unnerving sensation of weakness in her limbs, like she had once been strong but her muscles had long gone unused. _I am not weak_ . She stamped her foot onto the thin track with an almighty kick. The metal sheared, pulling out of the wood box. She yanked on the drawer and it broke free as she slipped on a slick spot on the floor and was sent falling backwards into the foot of the bed. There was a faint recognition of pain somewhere in her consciousness, but she barely acknowledged it.  ****  
** **

Climbing quickly onto her feet, she wielded the bulky drawer like a ram and positioned herself at the crack in the wall. She brought the corner of the heavy drawer face down with all the force she could summon. A piece of some unidentifiable white material chipped off the wall at the edge of the seam, turning clear before it clinked onto the floor. Idly, her brain registered spots of fresh blood on the white tile. She rammed the drawer down again, and it splintered in her hands. She wrenched off a solid piece, turning back to her target. ****  
** **

Suddenly, a clear voice echoed in the room. "Alexandria, stop. You're hurting yourself." ** **  
** **

A chill ran down her spine. Angrily, she retorted, "My name is _Lexa."_ ** **  
** **

_Lexa._ ****  
** **

_I am Lexa._ ****  
** **

Leksa kom Trikru. ****  
** **

 

* * *

 

Lexa examined her reflection in the pristine metal tabletop, honed to a mirror-like shine. Despite her efforts, she still couldn't acclimate herself to the eerie cleanliness of her new surroundings. Even though she knew the health hazards, a part of her ached to see a little rust, a spot of rot. Life was inescapably paired with decay, and this unending perfection seemed to her like a dream. 

The doctors were trying to heal her of that.

The first few weeks after her awakening had been exceedingly difficult. After his sudden voice had temporarily startled Lexa out of trying to break out of her walls, Doctor Woods had appeared to her on a screen embedded in the wall of her recovery room. 

Besides her name, Lexa still hadn't recovered most of her memories, though she discovered that she had instilled in her an innate sense of distrust for _tek_. As Doctor Woods tried to calm her from her panic, all Lexa could think was that nothing this floating, paper-thin digital ambiguation of a man said to her could be trusted as true.

The doctor had seemed to sense her distraction. "Lexa," he'd said, patiently. "Would it help if I talked to you myself? In person, instead of the screen?"

Lexa had agreed, reluctantly, to speak to the real doctor. Immediately, the panel of her wall that she had tried to break open had turned transparent, and through it she could see the doctor himself standing on the other side.

Doctor Woods looked at her patiently. "Just promise not to attack me, and I'll come inside. We can talk like two adults. Is that all right?"

Exhausted, Lexa had examined the slim doctor, slightly aging, with the stooped posture of someone who spent their days working tiny objects with their hands, and let herself deem him unthreatening. With a stiff nod, she had let him slide open the glass wall and come inside. She had even let him bandage her cut heel.

Now, sitting at the impeccably clean table, Lexa still couldn't be sure that she trusted him completely. She wasn't even sure if she trusted her own mind and memories since she'd woken up in that white room, let alone the impossible stories he'd told her afterwards. 

The doctors and awakening specialists she saw several times a day had lots of suggestions for her to, as they described it, align herself with reality. They urged her to use her senses to feel the world, the lessening pain in her healing foot, how she could smell the antiseptic cleanliness of her surroundings, how she could hear her own heart beat.

They called it _grounding_ herself.

The first time one of her awakening specialists had used that term, Lexa had felt like she had fallen backwards through her chair, through the floor. April, the specialist, had grabbed her arm, shaken her. "Lexa! Lexa, listen to me," she'd said loudly. "Come back! Lexa, it's all right. You're safe."

But Lexa was lost in a blur of dark fur and trees. April had called for an assistant and together, they had helped Lexa walk back to her recovery room. Tucking her into bed, April had placed a hand on Lexa's face and apologized for using that word. "I should have realized it would be a trigger for you, sweetheart. Get some rest, and we'll try again tomorrow." April had given her a small drink of a sickly sweet liquid that made her head spin, and Lexa had quickly fallen unconscious.

Her dreams, however, were still rioting awake. Though they had faded gradually as she eventually swam upwards back into consciousness, echoes of shouting and the smell of burning wood still followed her into the coming days. 

These visions and half-memories made Lexa's transition into what her doctors called the "real world" seem like an insurmountable undertaking. She felt like she was constantly trying to pull herself from the brink of sleep, or like she was climbing a hill trying to drag her own corpse behind her.

Her awakening team was kind to her, though. They seemed to have an endless well of patience to draw from, even when Lexa snapped at them or sprang to her own defense when they brushed against her. Lexa had been allowed to start furnishing her room once she'd stopped trying to kill her doctors, and her specialists helped to find decorations that seemed to comfort her. April especially seemed to share Lexa's love of greenery, and brought in several potted plants that she fitted with a sun lamp. Keeping her tiny garden alive gave Lexa something to hope for, as small a thing as it was, and watering her baby ferns and herbs gave her a reason to get out of bed most days.

Eventually, Lexa started feeling more whole again, despite her foggy memories. She still felt trapped in this sterile facility, and alone in a sea of doctors, but clarity was returning to her. She no longer had to be constantly monitored, and she'd heard April mention to another doctor the possibility of going outside soon. 

The possibility of seeing the sun excited Lexa more than she would have thought possible. Her skin itched with the absence of wind.

This is what she was thinking about as she sat at her metal table, mindlessly poking a spoon at the dregs of her afternoon meal. Lexa was determined to endure a thousand achingly dull grounding exercises and mindfulness practices with April if it meant seeing the land again.

Lexa looked up at the sound of oncoming footsteps and saw Doctor Woods approach her open door.

"Can I come in?" he asked.

Lexa nodded, suddenly trepidatious.

"Don't worry," he assured her, sitting down at her table. "It's nothing bad."

Lexa eyed him, fears not altogether assuaged. "What is it, then?"

Doctor Woods leaned back in his chair, smiling benignly at her. "Your team and I were thinking. We're very proud of you and the progress you've made in your grounding sessions. We feel that it's safe to begin the next step in your recovery."

"What is the next step?" Lexa felt anxiety cooling in her nerves.

Doctor Woods placed his elbows on the table, tenting his fingers. He tilted his chin down and looked at Lexa levelly over his small spectacles. "How would you like to get your memories back?"


	2. May We Meet Again

_Smoke was everywhere around her, filling in the spaces around her like a dark miasma. Sparks drifted past her eyes, twirling higher into the air on buffets of wind. She thought she could see trees through the stinging clouds, tall dark shapes standing unmoving just too far away to clearly see, and beyond that…_ “Lexa.” _Hearing her own name whispered in her ear, she jerked. The scarlet embers scattered as a fierce wind blew the smoke around her into a blinding spiral. She spun, dizzied, trying to see who had spoken her name, but there was no one beside her._

“Lexa!” _The sound came from directly behind, a shout that echoed in her head. Instantly, she turned, only to again be faced with the wall of choking brown haze. Through it one of the dark tree shapes began to bend. It walked towards her, its amorphous shape coalescing into a human figure as it came closer. She shouted into the wind,_ “Who are you?!” _Their face was hidden, obscured by smoke… but every few seconds a long blonde lock of hair would flick carelessly into the vortex between them, twisting with the wind and dust but remaining clean and bright as a field of summer grain._

“Don’t you know me, Lexa?”

_The words stabbed at her heart but they were spoken with the suggestion of a wry, teasing smile. Lexa remembered that voice, that hair. She remembered that body. It was a body she would kill for, a body she was sure she had killed for, in fact. It was a body she would die for._

_She whispered the only name that crawled into her consciousness. It wasn’t the right name, but it was good enough._

“Wanheda. I know you.”

_Wanheda spoke with a bitterly humored edge to her voice._ “Commander of Death. It’s fitting, isn’t it?”

_Lexa whispered, tortured,_ “Which one of us is dead?”

_Wanheda raised a hand through the veil of smoke, parting it like a curtain. She placed it on Lexa’s cheek, and warmth bloomed from it._ “Didn’t you once tell me that death wasn’t the end for us, Heda?”

_Lexa placed her own trembling hand on top of the soft fingers cupping her face._ “Where do I need to go?”

_Lexa was distantly aware of Wanheda’s voice suddenly growing softer and far away, as though she was whispering from across a chasm._ “Dear one, I need your spirit to stay where it is.”

_Lexa’s fingers sank through empty air to her own skin. Her cheek felt cold. She whispered, desperately, into the darkening woods,_ “But how can I find you?”

“To find me, Lexa, you have to find yourself.”

_Her knees sank into the blistering dirt beneath her. The smoke dissipated into the air as instantly as a drop of blood into the ocean._

“May we meet again.”

* * *

"How would you like to get your memories back?"

Lexa’s throat felt constricted in her neck and she stared dumbly back at Dr. Woods, her mostly-cleared plate cast to the side of the table, forgotten.

He smiled patiently. “Wouldn’t you say that it’s time?”

She forced a hoarse reply through her pressed lungs. “You can do that?”

“What do you think we’ve been preparing you for? Retrieving your memories can be a very trying period, and we’ve found that it’s a process best done gradually and with advance notice. With all your cognizance training, now you have the ability to cope with the memories you’ll be getting back. Though, I daresay it still won’t be an easy process.” He looked at her congenially over his tented fingertips. “But you, Lexa, are strong. I think you’ll be more than capable of handling yourself.”

Finding herself unable to produce more speech, Lexa stared into the doctor’s colorless eyes. She searched him for evidence of deception.

He prompted her gently. “What do you think?”

“I’ll get them all back? All my memories?”

He nodded once, serenely. “Gradually, yes. Giving you full access at once would be a completely traumatic experience, as we’ve unfortunately discovered. Your brain processes the information better in measured doses, starting with the less emotional memories; early childhood, and so on, and finishing with the most...recent.”

Lexa’s mind immediately jumped to a name that had been plaguing her since a nightmare she’d suffered a few weeks previously. Time had numbed the details, but the name had stuck. How far back into her memories did Wanheda appear? Would Lexa recognize her when she did?

“When can I start?”

Dr. Woods smiled at her. “I’m glad you’re eager. We can begin this afternoon, if you’d like. I have another procedure to see to at the moment, but April can fill you in on the process until I can return.” He stood, straightening the lapels on his pristine white coat. “Until then, do you have any questions for me?”

Lexa looked up at him, knitting her fingers together under the table. A current of excitement was buzzing through her body, only slightly lessened by a degree of fear.

“How soon can I get my full memory back?”

He chuckled, smoothing his thinning hair to his scalp. “Most patients just ask if it’s going to hurt. I should have guessed better for you. Well, Lexa, if it goes well, the recommended period for a healthy rememification is a month.”

Lexa interjected angrily, “You’re going to make me wait a month?!” She stood suddenly from her chair, incredulous.

The blandly cheerful expression didn’t leave the doctor’s face, but when she rose unexpectedly from the table Lexa saw him take a jerky half-step back and his hand go to hover over a speaker clipped to his belt. “A lifetime of memories is a tough thing for the brain to handle at once, Alexandria. In extraordinarily well-adjusted patients, we might be able to condense that period to three weeks, at the minimum. On the other hand, sometimes we have to slow the process even further. It’s up to you whether or not you qualify for the acceleration.”

Lexa understood the thinly veiled threat in his words and bit back the urge to correct his choice of name. Make any trouble, and they would make her pay for it, waiting. It was worth being given back her past at the expense of a bit of pride and patience.

She nodded in response.

Dr. Woods turned and walked away, his shiny black shoes squeaking slightly on the reflective floor. Watching him depart, Lexa slumped back into her chair, once again picking up her spoon and fiddling with it absently. What would it be like to remember who she was? What her parents were like, her friends… she wondered if she had been happy. Maybe her life had been peaceful, idyllic even. Maybe she could one day return to it.

The anxiety pooling in her gut convinced her otherwise, however. It was calming to think that the memories to be returned to her were joyful, but she felt she knew better than to hope for that. Why would someone from a safe and happy life be constantly on the defense as she always was? And though her body wasn’t so strong, and her skin bore no scars Lexa felt a history of exertion and violence in her muscle memory. Plus, if her life had been boring and easy, how had she ended up here, with no memory of it? Lexa was certain that whatever she was about to learn about her history wasn’t pleasant. And it hadn’t ended well.

At the sound of brisk approaching footsteps, Lexa dropped her spoon with a clink and sat upright without looking around. She knew those cheerful footfalls by heart.

“Isn’t this exciting, Lexa?” April said brightly, sitting in the chair Dr. Woods had so recently vacated. “I’m so happy for you! How are you feeling?”

Lexa crossed her arms on the tabletop, not ready to meet April’s eye. “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m ready.”

April reached over and gently touched her arm with red-tipped fingers. The contact made Lexa’s skin itch. “I know you’re ready, hon. But it’s okay to not be fine, you know. It’s scary.”

At that, Lexa brought her gaze up to meet April’s. “How do you know? Have you ever had to get your memories back?”

April looked back at Lexa levelly. “Oh honey, yes. I have. All of us here have had at least a few memories taken out and put back, to familiarize ourselves with the procedure and equipment. Some people here even developed the equipment and had to test it on themselves in the process. It’s not fun. But it’s also not that bad, and it gets easier.”

That surprised Lexa. “They made you all give up your memories to work here?”

April laughed. “Well, not all of them, silly. And they gave them back. Now come on, let’s go see the rememification room and I can teach you about how this is all going to go.”

Leaving her cold dishes to be picked up by the cleaners, Lexa followed April a step or two behind. _What kind of place makes its employees allow their minds to be tampered with?_ Sure, April said that their memories had all been given back, but...how would she know? How could she really tell whether all the blanks had been filled? How would Lexa be able to tell if her full past had been restored to her?

A new horror filled her mind. How would she know if these memories were even real? What if they were pumping her full of someone else’s past, or had they written her a new one? She could be anyone, from anywhere, and she would never know the truth.

A small voice in her head whispered to her. “You know the truth.”

And she realized, that she would indeed know the truth when she found it.

_Wanheda is the truth._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the kudos and comments on the first chapter! I seriously didn't think anyone was going to read it so I posted it and then made myself forget about it. But since I got such a good response, I'm definitely going to keep continuing this story.


	3. A Force to be Reckoned With

_Two men stand conversing a few feet from a pristine white bed. They themselves are almost inhumanly clean, impeccable in their demeanor. They consult a handheld screen, every now and again looking over the figure lying unresponsive under the snowy covers._

_One inquires of the other, “Woods, how long does recovery usually take? This one has been under for quite some time. Perhaps the extraction was...unsuccessful.”_

_Doctor Woods shoos away his companion’s words with a wave of his hand. “She is taking longer than most to come back but her response time is still registering normal parameters. Be patient.”_

_The other man nods, reassured. “My apologies; I remember that you have brought back several from far longer an interim. Your track record is nearly spotless.”_

_“Thank you. It’s true; Costia was unconscious for nearly a week. Had her electroencephalograms not come back in so flawless a condition we would have written her off completely and moved on. Back then, I might have been worried about this one as well, but her vitals are so strong. I suspect she’ll come to within the day.” Doctor Woods gazes at the unconscious woman lying still in the bed. “She’s rather remarkable.”_

_“I must agree with you there. We were all on tenterhooks watching the path her life took. She surprised us all.”_

_Doctor Woods agreed with a tip of the chin. “Agreed. Lexa was a force to be reckoned with.”_

 

* * *

 

Holding open the heavy door to the procedure room, April gestured for Lexa to come in with a reassuring smile. Inside the room, the few lights were dimmed and as Lexa’s eyes slowly adjusted she saw that there wasn’t much in the room to be illuminated by them.

“April,” she started, hesitating by the door, but even as April paused to listen to her question Lexa realized that she didn’t have one. Nothing specific enough to vocalize, anyway; just the unsettling miasma of general terror and excitement that was churning in her stomach.

April studied her face. “Is everything okay, Lexa?” When Lexa didn’t respond, she continued:”Hon, you can talk to me.”

Lexa repressed the urge to roll her eyes; April was always kind to her, but Lexa would never feel safe enough to truly confide in any employee of the facility that held her captive, even if that captivity was kept under the guise of making her healthy.

Then she looked at April’s face, and was taken aback temporarily. The careful, clinical concern shown towards her by the doctors and staff was universal across all faces. It wasn’t a true emotion. Lexa sometimes imagined it as a mask they each tied onto their faces as they crossed the threshold of her room. Disingenuine and impersonal, Lexa sometimes felt she would rather they not show any emotion at all.  
What she saw now upon April’s face was different. Lexa didn’t know how she’d gone so long without noticing; but then again supposed that her own participation in their earlier dining table discussion was indicative that a part of her had indeed noticed, if only subconsciously.  
April truly meant what she said. Of all the aides and nurses and doctors and therapists that had looked into Lexa’s eyes since she’d awoken, only April actually saw her, as a human, as more than an experiment. April alone cared about her.

“...Lexa?” What’s wrong?”

Lexa shook herself, and was shocked to feel tears spattering onto her cheeks from her rapid blinking.

“Nothing, April. I...I’m really okay.”

April took Lexa’s arm. “Lexa, we don’t have to do this today. We can go back to your room, you can read a book, take a nap...there’s really no hurry. You don’t have to push yourself.”

Laughing unevenly, Lexa shook her head. “No, it’s not that. I’m really all right. I want to do this. I want to do it now.”

April studied her face carefully for a moment. Then she stepped back. “All right. We’ll go on as planned. But if at any point you change your mind, you tell me right away.”

Lexa nodded fervently. “Yes, I will. I’m ready.”

“Okay then.”

April guided her further into the room. As she turned to a tablet charging in its wall niche, Lexa looked around the room in curiosity.  
The room was sparsely furnished, minimal shelving and cupboards along the walls and two chairs by the door. The most remarkable thing about the room was its centerpiece; a hulking seat that was part armchair, part doctors’ exam table. Wires and sensors ran along its padded arms and back, culminating in a cage-like headpiece with round silicone dots studding the inside perched on the squashy leather headrest. A wood reclining handle was inset into the side, but Lexa also noticed foot pedals behind the chair that were labeled “Incline/Recline” and “Up/Down”.

Above the chair a screen was bolted to the end of a folding arm that attached to the ceiling. At the moment, it was far away but the arm evidently extended to bring the screen down in front of the chair. Similar screens were braced immobile in several corners of the room.

“What do I need to do?” Lexa asked April, who was pulling a wheeled cart out from one of the cupboards.

“It’s easy,” April responded reassuringly. “All you have to do is look at the screen. Nothing can hurt you.”

_Nothing can hurt you. Nothing can hurt you._

With a deep breath, Lexa settled into the chair, appreciating the comfortable leather that did its job of distracting her from the other, more clinical aspects of its hardware.

April wheeled the little cart alongside the chair. On it were baskets of electrode stickers and more wiring.

“You know what these do,” she said, smiling at Lexa, who smiled back more sardonically than she originally intended. April began the process of sticking all of the electrodes to specific points on Lexa’s skin, before gathering up their wire tails and plugging them into a control board on the chair’s back. Once Lexa felt that she couldn’t move without accidentally ripping a sticker off, April gently lowered the scalp electrode cage onto Lexa’s hair, pressing the dots onto her forehead. Then she placed a black stick into Lexa’s right hand.

“That’s the escape key,” she explained, entering some codes into her tablet. “If this becomes too much for you, or you get overwhelmed or start feeling ill, you press the red button on the end of that signal and it will stop everything immediately. Don’t press the blue button, that’s for the coffee maker.”

Lexa turned the device over. “...There’s no blue button on this.”

“Sorry, that was supposed to be a joke. Really terrible of me, sorry. Anyway, one last thing. Let me just reach across you here, if that’s okay?”

After a nod from Lexa in consent, April reached across Lexa’s body and pulled a strap up and over her lap, buckling it next to her hip.

Immediately, Lexa began to panic at the thought of being trapped in that chair with no way out. Flashing images shot through her brain; torture, cages, being forced to watch horrible acts of violence, excruciating pain.

She realized suddenly that April was speaking.

“...just press it, and the buckle will let you out.”

“Sorry, can you show me that again?”

April smiled. “Sure; it’s just this part here. Press the black button and it’ll unbuckle for you. That way you can let yourself out if you need to.”

Relieved, Lexa sighed slowly through her teeth. “Why do we need the straps at all? I’m not going to run away, I promise.”

Chuckling, April patted Lexa’s arm. “I’m sorry. I know they feel restrictive, but you actually might try to run away without knowing you’re even doing it. Immersing yourself back into these memories can feel like you’re going through the experiences for the first time. I’ve actually been hit in the eye before, and they weren’t as strong as you are so I’d rather not risk it happening again.”

The idea was slightly disturbing to Lexa, though she wasn’t sure why. “Everything I’ve lived through, I’ll be living through again?”

Fresh panic surged through her. She wanted to rip off all the wires and run out of that room, out of the building, as far as she could go before they caught her again. Lexa couldn’t remember these memories, of course, but still, she knew. She was certain with every fiber of her being that she did not want to relive those moments again.

April’s face fell into a more serious expression as she looked back into Lexa’s caged-animal eyes, her forceful gaze compelling Lexa to meet them. “Lexa. Are you listening to me? You can do this. You are the strongest person I have ever met.”

Lexa struggled to maintain contact between their eyes. She felt...shame. Sickness. Fear. “I don’t feel so strong anymore,” she whispered. “I don’t remember what I was like before, but I have to believe that I was...better. Better than this.”

April stood up and turned away, busying herself with the equipment on the rolling cart. “If anyone out there is a better person than you,” she said quietly, “I haven’t met them.”

Lexa inquisitively turned to look at April, but she stayed turned resolutely the other way as she fiddled with the electronic displays on the shelves of the cart. Lexa looked at her, as if for the first time.

Who was April? How did a young woman so full of life and compassion fit into this world of impersonal clinicality? Every other doctor and technician she’d met in her weeks at the facility had the same cold and distant demeanor, like she was just another box to check off on a long list and they were in a rush to get home for dinner. Sheoften felt like a specimen, like an animal in a cage or something even less alive, a dead thing in a jar to be poked at and sent bobbing back.

Not for the first time, April alone made her feel like a human being again. What made her different from the others surrounding them? Who was she to have that power over Lexa?

Her reverie was broken as the door to the room swung open briskly. Lexa heard the short footfalls and knew before he spoke that Doctor Woods had entered the room.

“Afternoon, April, Lexa. Well, it seems as though you’ve been set up correctly. Has April gone over the protocol with you?”

Lexa hesitated. She’d gotten distracted by April’s comments. Had she been shown the entire process already? She couldn’t recall.

“Well--”

“I had just finished briefing her on the safety procedure when you arrived, Doctor,” April interjected. “I can finish up the debriefing if you’d like.”

“No need, April, I will continue from here.” Doctor Woods dismissed her with a wave of his hand.

April’s face fell slightly, but she nodded deferentially and handed him the tablet. Doctor Woods pushed a wheeled chair over and sat next to Lexa, closely examining her electrodes.

“These look to be in order,” he said. “Now, Lexa-” he stopped suddenly as Lexa saw him catch a glimpse of April, who was still standing behind him.

“That will be all, April.” he said pointedly.

April looked crestfallen. She blushed and backed out of the door, casting Lexa a worried glance on her way out.

Doctor Woods turned back to Lexa, who was feeling her anxiety surge deeper without April in the room to stabilize her panic.

“Lexa, what I need you to do is look at the screen in front of you.” He pushed a button on the tablet’s edge and the swing arm on the ceiling buzzed the screen lower until it settled into of Lexa’s line of sight. “The screen will be showing you images of your past, while I slowly remove the memory blocks for those specific moments. You will feel as though these experiences are new, but please try to remember that they are not really happening again, and that you’re sitting in this chair here next to me. Remember your grounding techniques.”

Grounding. There was that word again. Something about it seemed so familiar, but not perfectly right. Like remembering someone’s name but only being a few letters off.

“We’re going to start with the most peaceful time of your life to ease you into the process, which for you happens to be early childhood. Are you ready to start?”

Lexa was surprised to find that she had the strength to speak. “Yes,” she said, and felt that she was ready after all.

“Good. Let’s begin.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for not updating for so long. Life's kicked me in the ass. But I'm trying to get better, and I promise I haven't abandoned this project. Thanks for reading

**Author's Note:**

> The show did Lexa so dirty, she sat around on my mind for so long that I decided I had to write her a better story. I hope I do her justice.  
> This is my first fic in over a decade, I hope you enjoy it. Feedback and formatting tips welcome <3


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